72	ELEMENTS OF METAPHYSICS
are  the  provisions  which  the will   lays up in the storehouse of reason for future use.     If our intellect " were not a servant of the will, in all probability we should form no concepts.
§ 102. The sum of the predicates of a concrete object is infinite. The predicates, however, which are common to it with other objects, are generally, at least for our apprehension, very limited in number. Since the space which every object fills, is always different, and perceptibility depends on space-occupation, all concepts, being abstractions from all that is different, must lose their individual form. They are not to be confounded with images of fancy, which are in fact individual, and for that very reason only single representatives of concepts, containing much which is not common to all objects of the same kind.
| 103. The concepts of the oak, the beech, the fir, each consist of a number of marks or predicates which are partly different, partly in all three the same. If now, again, of these predicates we drop the non-identical and retain the identical, we obtain the concept of tree, richer in extent but poorer in content of predicates, which comprehends oak, fir, and beech, just as each of these includes the single objects of its kind. By the same process I pass from the concept of tree to that of plant, from